Traversing Borders and Creating Networks at Sea: The Case of Fishers in the South China Sea

Abstract

ABSTRACT This research focuses on the under-studied phenomenon of maritime borders by providing a civilian perspective on how fishers live, negotiate, contest, and transcend state borders and surveillance at sea. It explores the everyday transboundary practices of Chinese fishers in the geopolitically sensitive South China Sea (SCS), examining their cross-border tactics to sustain fishing livelihoods and the mechanisms underpinning these tactics. Based on long-term, continuous ethnographic investigations, we unravel four tactics employed by Chinese fishers to elude the constraints of territorial borders: contract production, trans-territorial production, paying for the sea, and the appropriation of marine physicality. These transboundary strategies are supported by three mechanisms, including common fisher identity, historical transnational networks, and regional development structures. This research shows the agency and creativity of fishers in challenging and punctuating maritime territoriality in the context of increasing militarisation and securitisation of borderlands. It illustrates how the distinct materiality, mobility, and temporality of the ocean can be weaponised by fishers to undermine state-bordering processes. By exposing the extensive, dynamic, and complex civilian interactions and collaborations in the region, we demonstrate that the SCS is more than a geopolitical space but at the same time a social site of cooperation and solidarity. In doing so, this research contributes to studies of maritime borders and civilian geopolitical subjectivity by illuminating the flexibility of fishers in exercising powers on borders at sea. It also advances the existing SCS area studies by ‘peopling’ the political geography of the region.